Lift chair recliners and other in-home mobility aids, intended to make life in the home that much easier.
For almost ten years now, I have been employed as a health care worker in a community care environment, and my experiences during this time have given me an increased awareness of the issues that the disabled and the elderly must face in their own homes on a daily basis. One observable problem is that of mobility in and around the home. Many persons are conscious of how taxing it can be to get around the neighbourhood but dont seem to understand the challenges involved in getting about one’s own abode.
There are many individuals who feel that they are not yet at the point where they really need the assistance of an electric or powered wheelchair to get about their own dwelling but they do require the assistance of various mobility aids to live comfortably at home. One example, an individual might want the help of a mobility walker to assist them in getting from room to room, or even just the assistance of a properly outfitted walking stick to move around without difficulty. I have had a number of clients who are not at the point of needing either a electric wheelchair orpersonal mobility scooter but do require the help of a walker to move around and to get out and about from their home and into the community. Someone who does not require constant seating but who does need to be able to rest after traveling for a short distance benefits from the ability of the walker to double as a sitting surface while outside doing their daily business.
One thing that I recollect one of my elder clients having in his home was a powered lift chair. This was quite an impressive mobility device. The idea behind the home lift chair recliner is that it offers all of the luxury of your typical recliner but at the same time it makes it easier for those with restricted mobility to sit in and stand up from the chair. The standard lift chair recliners allow the user to recline the backrest and the footrest of the chair but they go further than that. The lift chair also has a vertical lift control that the user can use to raise the chair up at an angle. By doing this, the occupant is slowly and steadily raised up in the chair to a near standing position allowing him or her to easily leave the chair. This vertical raising motion makes sure that the occupant is able to safely remain in the chair until it has finished moving. When it is time to once again sit in the chair, the controls can be used to slowly and steadily lower the chair into a comfortable sitting position. It is important that the chair offers the user slow and steady movement so that a feeling of security is maintained for the user. The home lift chair has also come to be known as the handicap home lift chair, however this is really a more pejorative term for it and is not a formally preferred choice of descriptive term for it.
For the sake of the comfort of the occupant, it is essential that the lift chair is an appropriate fit for the intended user. It is now possible to purchase, without any real difficulty, a lift chair that matches the shape and size (height and weight) of the intended occupant. Failure to match the chair to its user can comprimise the occupant’s safety. On the subject of safety, there are some safety features built into nearly all regular home lift chairs at present; Most lift chairs have a constant pressure switch built into their remote contol handset. This makes sure that the control only initiates when wished-for: if the hand held control should be dropped or likewise released, the up or down movement will end, ensuring the user’s safety so that they are not unwillingly toppled out of or lowered into the chair against their will. A further safety feature is the battery backup: if, for whatever reason, there might be a lack of power to the chair – such as a power failure in the immediate vicinity – then the battery backup can take over, allowing the chair’s occupant to still operate the chair and not be stuck there for any lengthened amount of time. From what I can recollect, the most customary type of battery used for a backup in these chairs is the nine-volt. Obviously, just like with fire alarms, it is imperative to remember to change the battery once a year even if it does not get used.
Generally there are three different categories of lift chairs. These three categories are used to describe how far back a lift chair can recline. The first sort of lift chair is identified as the two position lift chair. This form of lift chair is capable of reclining back about 45 degrees. Whereas it is not recommended for sleeping in, this mode of chair is favorable to viewing television in or for reading a book. The subsequent variety of chair is known as the three position lift chair and is perhaps the most universal one on the market. The backrest reclines nearly horizontally, the result being that it is a chair very well suited to reading, watching some television or even sleeping. The third type of chair which also boasts a commonly available design is called an infinite position lift chair. This type of chair reclines as far if not somewhat farther than a 3 position lift chair, however the footrest is capable of moving independently. In other types of lift chairs, the footrest moves in conjunction with the backrest, but infinite position lift chairs allow these two components to be adjusted separately. This makes the lift chair much more customizable for the user. Along the lines of customization, I also believe that it is feasible to order a lift chair in a diversity of colors and patterns from different manufacturers in addition to an assortment of an assortment of replacement lift chair parts if the need for such replacements should arise.
I hope that this helps to shed some light on the particulars behind the typical home lift chair and what to be on the look out for when in the marketplace for such ahome mobility aid.